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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27919444">Belief</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/AVegetarianCannibal/pseuds/AVegetarianCannibal'>AVegetarianCannibal</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Hannibal (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>M/M, One Shot, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Theories of love and time travel, quantum metaphysics, vaguely scientific</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 19:56:11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>342</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27919444</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/AVegetarianCannibal/pseuds/AVegetarianCannibal</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Hannibal and Will realize they were in love long before they met.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Will Graham &amp; Hannibal Lecter</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>52</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Belief</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Will looked up to see Hannibal framed against the cornflower blue of the horizon beyond the window. The same color deepened the skin beneath his eyes where the ocean had battered his face. </p>
<p>
  <span>“You’ve been staring at me,” Will said. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hannibal smiled and slowly sat in the window, careful of his wounds. “Did you ever suddenly feel out of nowhere a burst of warmth... of love… of a worshipful adoration so piercing that you were nearly knocked back by it?” he asked.  “Perhaps in the most isolated moments of your life, when you would have been possessed of the awareness it would take to feel such a thing?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Not often,” Will said with a shrug. “More than once.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And how did you interpret the experiences?” Hannibal asked. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Will shrugged again. “Easily dismissed as another side effect of the way my brain works. Mirror neurons conjuring up ghosts of the empathy I had felt for someone else… </span>
  <em>
    <span>Of</span>
  </em>
  <span> someone else. Would you like to claim that it was something else?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I have a belief that I can’t even name as hypothesis—it’s a notion impossible to prove or to test,” Hannibal said. “But a </span>
  <em>
    <span>deep</span>
  </em>
  <span> enough love... an </span>
  <em>
    <span>encompassing</span>
  </em>
  <span> enough love... isn’t bound by the rules that we physical beings must follow. What particles or waves such a love is made up of, I don’t know. But I know that because I love you now I also loved you then, and that it touched you long before we had even met, unbound from the relentless directionality of the arrow of time.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“How did you come to be possessed by this belief?” Will asked.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Because I felt it, too,” Hannibal said. “When I was young and alone, and when your love reached me, I also felt the sensation of a long-awaited embrace and of the cold of the Atlantic receiving me.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re convinced I love you?” Will asked. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And so you loved me all those years ago,” Hannibal said with a nod. He smiled and Will went to him. “It’s why I fell.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>End</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <strike></strike>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Sometimes a few paragraphs of dialogue come to me whole and unbidden. This was one of those times.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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